Purgatorio explores themes of murder, death and revenge

By Rebecca Harkins-Cross

UpdatedJuly 24, 2014 — 11.50amfirst published at 9.54am

THEATRE

Purgatorio

5pound theatre and Attic Erratic

The Owl and the Pussycat, until August 2

Rating: ★★★

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Vengeance and absolution have directly political connotations in Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman’s best-known play, Death and the Maiden, in which a former political prisoner seeks justice against the man she believes was her captor.

These themes may play out on a more personal register in Purgatorio, but their philosophical implications are arguably more far-reaching. We open on a man interrogating a woman, unable to decipher whether he wants her to purge as jailer, analyst or henchman of the Divine.

Gradually we discern these are incarnations of Jason and Medea, the woman scorned who turned a knife on her children and her husband’s paramour. Purgatory is an eternal tete-a-tete over culpability and expiation – an uroboros that the woman suggests is “going to take forever”.

When Freya Pragt reaches her emotional peaks as the woman she gives the impression of a caged animal, confessions spilling from her mouth in furious torrents. While there were a few early tremors in Jason Cavanagh’s performance as the man, the final act still carries heft (though is not as devastating as it could be).

The decision to bisect the stage via a transparent curtain does not only obscure symbolically, distracting from the vehement drama on either side. Celeste Cody has otherwise directed a simple but tense production of this propulsive play.

Larger questions about the nature of guilt linger, and whether some sins are unforgivable. Purgatorio’s darker moments suggest time is a “moebius strip” that dooms us to eternally repeat our forebears’ mistakes.